Fallen Cold and Dead
by Irhaboggle
Summary: The war for the Asylum has been won, but the cost was high. Contessa has lost her beloved Captain and wife, Maggots, and the rest of the Asylum has lost its very own beloved leader: Emilie. Now is not the time for celebration, it is a time for mourning and remembrance for all the brave girls who died defending their asylum.


In the distance, the asylum bells tolled. It was a sick harmony of triumph and despair. All though the inmates had won the war and, in the process, their freedom, it had come at a devastatingly high cost. So many young girls were dead, even more than expected. Outnumbered as they were, the doctors had been vicious and managed to take upwards of 70% of the girls with them to the grave. Now, the survivors rose from their knees, surveying all their sisters who would stand no more. Nothing but shed blood and broken bone littered the war path and the survivors, shell-shocked, began to bury their dead even before dressing their wounds.

"O Captain! my Captain! Our fearful trip is done!" suddenly, over all the others, one particular voice could be heard, wailing. It was Contessa. Those around her saw her cradling a small, mangled body with a shock of orange hair on its head. It was Captain Maggots, fallen cold and dead. She lay limp in Contessa's arms as Contessa sobbed and screamed over her bloody and cooling corpse.

"The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won! The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting! While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring!" in her grief, she began speaking in the sailor dialect Captain Maggots always used. It was as though she thought simply using pirate words would rouse the girl from her death-sleep. If only it were that simple. But fruitless as it was, Contessa continued on, screaming and crying in that "foreign tongue", as though trying to tell Maggots about their glorious victory. But Maggots never replied and, at last, her silence finally settled into Contessa's brain.

"But O heart! heart! heart!" she mourned. "O the bleeding drops of red, where on the deck my Captain lies, fallen cold and dead!"

And as Contessa spoke this final line before falling into a silent stupor, all around her, the other girls began to wail as well, miserable, mourning mothers, sisters, friends, lovers, wives and daughters. All of the girls in one horrible unison began their mourning song while Contessa finished her own, kissing Maggot's lips one last time.

"O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells!" some of the girls pleaded with their fallen comrades the way Contessa had done for Maggots. The results were the same. Silence. But that did not deter some of the mourners. "Rise up! For you the flag is flung! For you the bugle trills! For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths! For you the shores a-crowding! For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning!" but still, no response from the fallen soldiers of the Asylum For Wayward Victorian Girls. Although some of the braver, younger inmates had already broken down the office doors to the asylum, plundering back all the goods that had been stolen from them and more, the older ones remained outdoors, listening to their awed and excited chatter as they gathered up their treasures. They tried to spread their newfound wealth to the others to act as some sort of consolation to the mourners, but it had little effect on anyone.

"Here Captain! Dear lover!" Contessa had started to cry and mourn again. One of the newer inmates had given her a teacup with a magnificent pirate ship painted on the side. Contessa slipped it into Maggots' hands, still pleading with the dead pirate to respond and look. "My arm beneath your head! Is it some dream that on the deck, you've fallen cold and dead?" Contessa still couldn't believe that this was real. Though everyone had known ahead of time what war would mean, to see the reality was still hard to swallow. So many girls had gone into battle and so few had come out. Those mourning chattered in denial, unable to believe that of all the ones to lie fallen cold and dead, their loved ones were the ones that life chose to throw away. Death did not take them, for the girls would never be taken anywhere. Instead, life had rejected them, and like all the times before, this expulsion from a higher power had worked like a charm.

Contessa and many, many others continued to grieve, still trying to fathom that their loved ones were truly gone from the face of the earth forever, never to walk or talk or sing again. No more dancing, no more tea time, no more exchanging kisses or whispered words of love behind the doctor's back. No, they were dead. All of them. Dead now. And they would never ever be back. They were gone, just like that, and life would not accept them back into his kingdom. So many bright, brilliant young women each full of a life and light of their own had been knocked over just like that. Dead. Gone. Fallen cold and dead.

But away in a corner, far away from the other mourners, in Cell W14A, were two more inmates. One dead, one alive. The one who was alive, Veronica, was clutching at the one who was dead and sobbing. This one was Emilie, the leader of the rebellion. Emilie, their redheaded hero who had been the one to lead them this far, had been murdered right here in her own little cell. And she hadn't even been murdered by one of their bigger enemies. No, the girl had been slain by a random orderly, a mere assistant to the doctors, the real enemies. There was just something so insulting about that, that their grand and glorious Emilie had been killed by a mere worker, instead of someone of real importance, like the head of the asylum himself. But no, it was true, Emilie was lying dead in her cell with a stab wound through her back that pierced her heart. The weapon responsible, a scalpel, was no longer there, Veronica having shoved it right back into the throat of the man who had done this. He was dead too, but Veronica had forcefully thrown his corpse out of Cell W14A. He did not deserve to die beside a queen and a commander of war.

"My Captain does not answer, her lips are pale and still," Veronica whimpered, lips quivering as she sang over Emilie's dead body. "My lover does not feel my arm, she has no pulse nor ever will!" she despaired as she felt Emilie's wrist, and then her neck. Nothing but cold, pale, smooth skin, decorated with a scarlet splotch from the blood splatter from her mortal wound. It wasn't fair! Emilie wasn't supposed to go like this! She was supposed to go out in a blaze of glory against Dr. Stockhill himself! She wasn't supposed to die from an orderly, especially not after one little stab wound! In fact, she wasn't supposed to die at all! She had been their leader, and now she was gone. What were they going to do without the one who had started all of this war in the first place?

The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done," Veronica tried to tell Emilie, but Emilie couldn't hear her. "From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won. Exult O shores, and ring O bells!" Veronica acknowledge the small celebrations popping up across the asylum as grief slowly faded away into the early stages of triumph, hope and recovery. Veronica was still locked in a stage of grief.

"But I with mournful tread," she murmured as she finally lowered Emilie's corpse back to the floor, rising to her own feet and heading out to join the others and break the news that their commander was gone. "Walk the deck my Captain lies, fallen cold and dead."

**AN: Obviously based on the poem, but originally it was only going to be a Magessa fic, then I decided to expand it to the others and since the poem is about a leader being killed, in this version, Emilie dies in the last battle. Even more unfair, I've written that her death wasn't even a good one. It was lame, and that's part of the reason Veronica is so broken. Emilie shouldn't have died at all, but if she had to, she deserved better than the pathetic death she received. But hey, doesn't that just hammer home our most favorite message? Life isn't fair. Not all heroes will have heroic deaths, some will die easily and forgotten. In this fic, Emilie can attest to it.**

**(Semi Stage-Canon, semi Book-Canon).**


End file.
